Booking Through Thursday: the library

Thanks to my friend Sarah, I just discovered Booking Through Thursday. Hop on over there and share your own answers to these weekly book-ish questions.

This week's questions relate to the library:What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

When I was a kid we lived in a small town, and the library was at the end of our street- about four blocks away. The library was small- two rooms made from what had originally been a house. The floor creaked when you walked to the back from the front, and there was a slight hill in the floor. The back room held the kids books, and the front room had all the "grown up" books and the two desks where the librarians sat. If you needed reference material, you had to get special permission from the librarians to go down into the unfinished basement where they kept special files. I can remember walking into the library and seeing those same ladies sitting there every single time.

I don't remember how old we ("we" being my next youngest sister, J) were when we were first allowed to go to the library by ourselves, but I remember feeling very grown up. Back then the librarians stamped the due dates in the back of the books with a small stamp attached to the end of their pencils. And there was one librarian... I never knew her name... who was always very grumpy, and always made a point of seeing which books you had selected and commenting on them. I was there regularly- as a kid I read so much that I often got in trouble for reading when I should have been doing something else, like cleaning my room.

These days, my city has a modern library with electronic cards and self check-outs. Most of the time I select my books online from home, and go to the library with a list in hand. Just thinking about that old library in my hometown makes me smile, though. I hope my kids will someday have their own fond library memories and a love for reading!